Claude skill evaluates B2B vendors by analyzing their AI agents

Software procurement is broken, and someone's finally doing something about it. A developer has built a Claude skill that automatically evaluates B2B vendors by interrogating their AI chatbots — no forms, no staged demos, just direct questions about what actually matters to your business.

The End of Procurement Theatre

For decades, buying business software has followed the same tedious script: fill out lead forms with your company details, wade through cherry-picked G2 reviews, and sit through demos where sales reps dance around your real questions like they're dodging VAT inspections.

This new approach flips that entirely. Instead of you chasing vendors, the AI skill does the legwork. You provide your company name and a list of vendors you're considering. The system researches your business automatically — your industry, company size, tech stack — then interrogates each vendor's AI chatbot with questions tailored to your specific situation.

No more generic "tell me about your features" conversations. If you're evaluating customer service platforms, it asks about API limitations, integration complexity, and pricing tiers that actually matter for a company your size.

Why This Actually Works

The genius lies in exploiting a gap most vendors haven't considered. Companies have spent millions training AI chatbots to answer customer questions helpfully and accurately. These bots are designed to be transparent and useful — quite the opposite of traditional sales processes.

When a human asks pointed questions, there's always the sales filter: "Let me connect you with our enterprise team" or "That's a great question for our demo next week." But AI chatbots, properly prompted, will often give you straight answers about limitations, pricing structures, and integration requirements that sales teams would rather discuss "offline."

The tool's creator found that vendor chatbots revealed information about API rate limits, data export restrictions, and pricing that would typically require three meetings and a signed NDA to extract.

What This Means If You Run a Business

This represents a fundamental shift in how procurement intelligence gets gathered. For small businesses and agencies like ours, time spent on vendor evaluation is time not spent on client work. The traditional process can consume weeks of back-and-forth just to get basic technical specifications.

More importantly, this approach levels the playing field. Enterprise buyers have procurement teams and vendor relationship managers who can extract real information through established channels. Small businesses typically get the "schedule a demo" runaround until they can prove they're serious buyers.

By systematically questioning vendor AI systems, smaller companies can access the same level of technical detail and honest assessment that larger competitors take for granted. It's procurement intelligence without the politics.

The wider implication is that vendors will need to rethink how they train their AI systems. Currently, most customer-facing chatbots are optimised for helpfulness. Soon, they'll need to balance transparency with competitive sensitivity — a much trickier brief.

What To Do About It

1. 1.Test this approach manually first. Before adopting automated tools, spend an hour questioning vendor chatbots directly. Ask specific technical questions about your use case and compare how forthcoming different vendors are.

1. 1.Document what matters before you start. Create a standardised list of deal-breaking requirements and technical specifications. The more specific your criteria, the more useful automated evaluation becomes.

1. 1.Use this for initial screening, not final decisions. Automated vendor evaluation excels at eliminating obvious mismatches and surfacing red flags. You'll still want human conversations for shortlisted options.

1. 1.Prepare for vendor adaptation. Smart vendors will start training their AI systems to deflect detailed technical questions once this approach becomes widespread. Use this window while it's still effective.

1. 1.Apply the principle beyond software. The same approach works for any vendor with AI customer service — from hosting providers to payment processors. Think systematically about where you can extract better information through AI rather than sales teams.